One of the biggest mistakes I see affiliates making every day is they focus only on making a sale now. Yes, I know what you’re thinking: “Wait, that’s the whole point, isn’t it — closing sales?” Well … yes and no.

Yes, if possible you want to convert a visitor the first time they click your affiliate link. But no … because come on, how realistic is that? Not very! Even the highest converting product is only going to close a small percentage of your visitors. Most will leave your site without buying.
All those people who click through but don’t buy are called “exit traffic.” And it’s a huge mistake to just let all that exit traffic slip away…

Yet I see affiliates put a huge amount of effort into setting up PPC campaigns and building killer landing pages – without ever even trying to do something with their exit traffic. They’re narrowly focused on making one sale at a time.

Or I see affiliates work their fingers to the bone on all the fine points of SEO, building authority sites full of content, totally focused on getting visitors TO their site — and just letting them leave!

If these affiliates stop running PPC ads today, or if Google slaps them and jacks up their click costs, or if they lose their rankings in the “Google dance,” their business grinds to a halt!

So the strategy I’m about to describe will allow any affiliate to…

* Build a long-term business – regardless of what happens to your PPC, your SEO, or any other aspect of your marketing

* Upsell your visitors on more expensive products or services

* Become recognized as an expert in your field with a stellar reputation

* Create a strong relationships with your customers so they keep buying from you – and only YOU – over and over again.

So what is this strategy?

You guessed it, it’s building an opt-in list! Creating your own newsletter, ezine, or alerts list.

If you have an opt-in list…

* You’re building a customer base — not just a series of small sales that you have to keep working for.

* With a list, you can sell to the same customers and get repeat business — without incurring more advertising costs.

* And you build a trusting relationship with your readers — so they’ll be loyal in doing business with you and keep buying through your affiliate links.

So, as an affiliate, how do you build an opt-in list?

The simplest way is to direct all your exit traffic to an opt-in page. After the person opts-in, send them to a thank you page which pre-sells them on an affiliate product.

Since you’re already building traffic to your site, it’s a simple matter to send the people who leave to a page with an opt-in.

How should your opt-in page look?
Believe it or not, there is an art and science to creating an effective opt-in page. It must…

* Be a small and lightweight page. It can’t take forever to load!

* Be short and to the point. Cut the long copy.

* Have everything above the fold. That means the headline, graphics, opt-in form, and link to privacy policy all need to fit on the screen with no scrolling.

* Open with a strong headline that uses the word “FREE.” Emphasize your FREE newsletter, FREE membership, FREE insider information. Free is the most powerful marketing word you can use!

* List 3-4 bulleted benefits of opting in.

* Offer a freebie or incentive for opting in. This can be a free report, ebook, video, audio file — anything that’s relevant.

* A graphic of your freebie — a pretty ebook cover, a video screenshot, etc.

* A nice, large, high impact opt-in box.

Next step? You’ll need to TEST this opt-in page by driving some quick traffic to it. Here’s three ways you can do that:

1. Article Submissions – Write and submit articles to all the big article syndication sites like http://ezinearticles.com/, http://www.articlesbase.com/, and http://www.affsphere.com/.

Be sure your resource/author box has a link to your FREE newsletter. (Yes, get that word FREE in there!)

Articles are my personal favorite. They’re the best and most reliable long-term technique I’ve ever found for building a list.

2. PPC – The easiest way to get traffic instantly. The only downside is the per-click costs; PPC can and does get expensive. But you can also conservatively estimate that you will make $1 per month per subscriber.

So you can run a very quick PPC campaign to see how much it costs you to get a subscriber. If you’re spending $1 per subscriber, you’ll be able to make that money back within a month. Even if it costs more than $1, it’s probably worth it!

Another tip: Send all of your paid traffic directly to your opt-in page. After the person subscribes, redirect them to a page that pre-sells the product they were searching for. Be sure to test this. Sometimes your conversions on the front-end can fall, but they be very good on the back end and long-term.

3. Ezine Ads – Some people say ezine advertising doesn’t work any more. But I have found them to be a very cost effective way to build a list. Just be sure your ad promises a “FREE membership” or ” FREE information,” and send all the traffic to your opt-in page.

To sum up, building a large opt-in list is the absolute best business “insurance” you could have. It’s as close to “owning” your customers as you’ll ever get in affiliate marketing.

So stop going for the immediate sale – and start building an opt-in list for long-term email marketing. That way if you quit paying for PPC advertising or lose your search engine rankings, you’ll still be in business!

Anik Singal
CEO, Lurn, Inc.